Science

SpaceX has delayed its latest grocery run for the International Space Station by at least another few days. The company now aims to launch its first recycled rocket for NASA on Friday. The unmanned Falcon rocket originally flew in June. The Dragon capsule made a space station shipment in 2015. This will be the first launch in more than a year from this Florida pad, the scene of a rocket explosion in 2016. Late Tuesday, SpaceX pushed back the launch for the second day in a row, saying it needs to rid the second-stage fuel system of unwanted particles. Liftoff had been scheduled for Tuesday, then Wednesday. If the Falcon isn't flying by Friday, SpaceX will have to wait until late December at NASA's

“Let’s just meet,” Tillerson said in a speech to Washington’s Atlantic Council think tank, presenting a new diplomatic overture amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile advances and harsh rhetoric between the two sides. “The president’s views on North Korea have not changed,” the White House said.

Defects were found in equipment for a third-generation nuclear reactor under construction in southern China with the problematic parts being replaced, the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) said Wednesday. The issue concerned equipment used in one of two new European Pressurised Reactors (EPR), large units designed to offer improved power and safety. With EPRs in Finland and France facing setbacks, the Chinese Taishan 1 and 2 are on track to become the first working reactors of their kind in the world.

Fossils from New Zealand have revealed a giant penguin that was as big as a grown man, roughly the size of the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The creature was slightly shorter in length and about 20 pounds (9 kilograms) heavier than the official stats for hockey star Sidney Crosby. It measured nearly 5 feet, 10 inches (1.77 meters) long when swimming and weighed in at 223 pounds (101 kilograms). If the penguin and the Penguin faced off on the ice, however, things would look different. When standing, the ancient bird was maybe only 5-foot-3 (1.6 meters). The newly found bird is about 7 inches (18 centimeters) longer than any other ancient penguin that has left a substantial portion of a skeleton,

A team of researchers, including Stephen Hawking, is investigating whether the first known object from outside the solar system contains the first sign of life beyond our planet. Using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, scientists with the 100 million dollar research project Breakthrough Listen will observe an asteroid named 'Oumuamua for 10 hours on Wednesday. 'Oumuamua, formally known as 1I/2017 U1, is the first object discovered in the solar system that appears to originate from another star system.

After another brutal rape and murder of a young Indian girl, demonstrators have gathered in the northern state of Haryana to protest the failure of police to identify a culprit days after the crime, BBC reports.

This week, the skywatchers will experience a flashy double feature: The Geminid meteor shower — one of the year's best — will coincide with an unusually close encounter by an asteroid. That asteroid? It's called 3200 Phaethon, discovered by a NASA satellite in 1983. With a diameter of about 3 miles, it's the third-largest near-Earth asteroid classified by the space agency as "potentially hazardous." On Saturday, Phaethon will come within 0.069 astronomical units — about 6.4 million miles — of Earth. That is when NASA plans to take detailed radar images of the asteroid at its Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the Mojave Desert and at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. NASA says

The Earth hums, and scientists have for the first time recorded the sound in the ocean. Using seismometers in the Indian Ocean, researchers picked up on the sound that is way, way too low for mere human ears to hear, reports Live Science. No recording is available, but a Columbia University scientist not involved with the study in Geophysical Research Letters gives National Geographic a rough description: "It's like taking a piano and slamming all the keys at the same time," says Spahr Webb. "Except they're not nice harmonics. They're oddball frequencies." And ultra-low ones: Specifically, the hum is between 2.9 and 4.5 millihertz, and humans can only begin hearing things at about 20 hertz, or

Russian troops will soon begin exiting Syria under new orders from President Vladimir Putin, who made an unannounced visit to the war-torn country Monday. “I order the defense minister and the chief of the general staff to start withdrawing the Russian group of troops to their permanent bases,” Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted Putin as saying, according to the BBC. “I have taken a decision: a significant part of the Russian troop contingent located in Syria is returning home to Russia,” he added.

Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created the photo using data from Juno’s JunoCam imager. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back an incredible animation of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the gas giant’s iconic, 10,000-mile-wide storm. ‘One of the most basic questions about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is: how deep are the roots?’ said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

President Donald Trump wants to send man back to the moon — and on to Mars. Trump signed a policy directive Monday instructing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to "refocus America's space program on human exploration and discovery." The move, Trump said, "marks an important step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 for long-time exploration." "This time we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint," he said, "we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond." Past presidents, including George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, have also proposed returning to the moon and missions

A Chinese county bordering North Korea is preparing for an influx of refugees, according to what appears to be a leaked document cited by the New York Times, revealing a rare acknowledgement that crisis or conflict could be on the horizon. The Times reports that the internal document, apparently leaked from the state-owned telecoms firm China Mobile and circulated on social media, said a company manager had inspected five sites being built to accommodate refugees in early December. The document says that China Mobile was asked to supply Internet services in the camp areas, located in three villages of northeast Changbai County and two other cities in Jilin province.

A tick discovered encased in amber likely feasted on the blood of feathered dinosaurs as many as 99 million years ago, a new report says. A study, published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, helped scientists determine what ticks feasted on before mammals evolved. Ticks, which were already known to be ancient critters, are commonly associated with biting mammals and humans. The scientists based their studies on amber specimens discovered in Burma. In one of the pieces, a tick was located next to a feather that belonged to a dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period, NPR reported. The Cretaceous Period began about 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago, according to the Enclyclopedia

It isn’t news that society is fascinated with serial killers and their motives. So … what exactly makes a murderer? According to FBI.gov, “Serial murderers, like all human beings, are the product of their heredity, their upbringing, and the choices they make throughout development.” But even with this knowledge, mothers of notorious killers reported their children showed no violent behavior growing up, so it’s all still kind of a mystery. Here, we explain what you and an infamous serial killer could have in common. Bradley Waldroup had the MAOA gene — could you? An NPR Talk of the Nation details how neuroscientists are utilizing brain scans and research to identify similarities between killers.

While Doug Jones’ supporters were reveling in the fact that their candidate had become the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the Senate in 25 years, his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, refused to concede the race. “Realize when the vote is this close, it’s not over,” Moore said onstage Tuesday night at what was supposed to be his victory party. “And we still got to go by rules about this recount provision.” At that point, the Associated Press and several other news organizations had already projected Jones as the winner.

Popular television shows such as the “Law & Order,” “CSI” and “NCIS” franchises glorify forensic science as a magical, near-flawless tool for identifying criminals. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s depiction of forensic science needs a reality makeover. The “CSI effect” is well-documented. As long ago as 2009, scientists with the National Research Council noted that no forensic method (except for nuclear DNA analysis) can reliably and consistently connect evidence to a specific individual or source. More recently, President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported that pattern-matching forensic procedures are unreliable. The Innocence Project has exonerated many hundreds of

The Trump administration's mixed views on climate change notwithstanding, a group of federal scientists on Tuesday released a stark report on the warming at the top of the planet, suggesting that it is unparalleled in more than a millennium. "The Arctic is going through the most unprecedented transition in human history, and we need better observations to understand and predict how these changes will affect everyone, not just the people of the north," Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic Research Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a presentation at the 2017 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. Mathis was unveiling the 2017 Arctic Report

A Chinese climber famous for scaling skyscrapers without any safety equipment has died after falling from a 62-story building in the city of Changsha, according to his girlfriend. The 26-year-old daredevil, Wu Yongning, fell more than a month ago on Nov. 8, but his death was only recently confirmed by his girlfriend, according to the BBC. After dabbling in television and film, Wu was drawn to the more lucrative endeavor of “rooftopping,” where he could put his martial arts training to use, the BBC reports.

NASA's Juno spacecraft is getting to the roots of Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot. New research, collected during the mission's first pass over the iconic storm, reveals that it extends far beneath the planet's surface. The spacecraft also discovered two newly identified radiation zones. "One of the most basic questions about Jupiter's Great Red Spot is, how deep are the roots?" Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a statement. Bolton and his team presented Juno's results at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans yesterday (Dec. 11). "Juno data indicate that the solar system's most famous storm is almost one-and-a-half

Major investors vowed Tuesday to move away from Earth-warming fossil fuels as world leaders met in Paris seeking to unlock new cash to save humanity from climate "doom". Two years to the day since 195 nations sealed the Paris Agreement to avert worst-case climate change, banks and companies announced billions of dollars of intended divestments from coal, oil and natural gas at a finance-themed climate summit. "We are losing the battle" against climate change, French President Emmanuel Macron told delegates.

Pistorius sustained a minor injury in an alleged assault at the Attridgevill Correctional Centre last week, Singabakho Nxumalo of the Department of Correctional Services told The Associated Press. Pistorius had a medical checkup and was found to have a bruise, said Nxumalo, who added that the incident is being investigated. The disagreement broke out between Pistorius and another inmate over use of a public telephone, he said.

Google may be the household name when it comes to search, but Microsoft is hoping it can make its Bing search engine the smartest. The Redmond, Wash.-based company has announced a handful of new features that it says are powered by artificial intelligence. The biggest changes enable Bing to be smarter about the information it chooses to display above search results in response to a query.

Death is a universal truth, yet not everyone believes the same truth about what happens when we die. Some are faithful to a long-standing religious belief, while others prefer to rely on scientific developments and research to explain the afterlife (or lack thereof). So, what actually happens when we die? Religious leaders have dedicated their lives to explore some of the highly debated theories on what comes next, meanwhile, real survivors of near-death experiences have given scientists new ideas about what the “afterlife” really entails (page 13). There’s a light at the end of the ‘tunnel’ About 4% of the world’s population has reported having a near-death experience. Many of the phenomena

Aides for San Francisco Supervisor London Breed were answering the phone differently by early Tuesday morning. Mayor Ed Lee, the city’s leader since 2011 and the first Chinese-American mayor of San Francisco, died unexpectedly during the night. Lee was 65 years old.

Minnesota became the latest U.S. state on Tuesday to restrict controversial weed killers made by Monsanto Co and BASF SE that were linked to widespread crop damage, while Arkansas took a step back from imposing new limits. The United States has faced an agricultural crisis this year caused by new versions of the herbicides, which are based on a chemical known as dicamba.